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"THERE WAS NOTHING IN IT EXCEPT SOME SILVER COIN 

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4 


LITTLE DICK’S SON 


BY 

MRS. KATE GANNETT WELLS 

rn/VO . C\XVVV\Gt^'^ \X 

>- tl 


NEW YORK: 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
PUBLISHERS 

13 vy 



CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I. 

What Happened and How 7 

II. 

“My Son” 13 

III. 

Peter’s Boots . 19 

IV. 

Peter’s Rummage Sale 25 

V. 

A Secret Society 31 

VI. 

The Hurdy-Gurdy in the Park . 39 

VII. 

The Cobbler’s Whale 46 

VIII. 

The Sounding-Board 60 


6 


6 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

IX. 

A Newspaper ... 56 

X. 

Doughnuts ' 62 

XI. 

Dick’s Charge 69 

XII. 


Two Guardians and Their Wards . 


. . 77 


LITTLE DICK’S SON. 


I. 

WHAT HAPPENED AND HOW. 

“ I KNOW something is going to happen to- 
morrow,” said Peter, aged eight, to Dick, aged 
four. “ Mama is so queer, and a long, narrow 
basket has come with nothing in it.” 

“ Promise not to tell,” whispered little Dick, 
“ and I’ll tell you — it is something they are 
going to do to me, and you mustn’t let ’em.” 

“ How do you know ? ” 

“ ’Cause folks shouldn’t whisper so loud. I 
know what I’m going to do — I’m going to run 
away. You take good care of everybody, ’cause 
they won’t never see me again ! ” 

Peter was awed, though he stoutly declared, 
“ I don’t believe you know how to run away.” 
Then he went whistling out of the room to con- 
ceal his fright. But whatever was going to 
be done, he must prevent it. 

Peter’s own little room was cold ; yet it com- 


8 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


manded a view of the back-yard, and in it he 
also coula hear the front door-bell ring. So he 
made up his mind to stay there, and watch and 
listen. As for anything happening to his little 
brother Dick without his leave, no one need 
expect that for a moment. 

However, he soon grew tired of just watching 
and listening, and decided to count once more 
the duplicates in his collection of stamps. He 
could do that and keep on the lookout at the 
same time. Thus it was, how Peter never 
rightly could tell, that he neither knew the 
front door-bell had rung nor that the back-gate 
had shut, and was startled when he heard his 
* mother’s voice calling Dick. At once he was 
sure his little brother had run away, just by 
the sound of the word. He felt frightened, but 
he went down-stairs, asking, “What’s the 
matter?” in a careless manner. 

“ You there Peter ? ” exclaimed his mother. 
“ Then where’s Dick? We can’t find him.” 

“ Perhaps he’s in the vacant lot — I’ll go 
and see,” answered Peter, making for the 
door. 

But little Dick was neither there nor in the 
Public Garden, and the policeman had not 
seen him, and nobody on the street had seen 
him. Then all was alarm and confusion in the 
house, and Peter was so ashamed of his own 
lack of watcMulness that he still kept Dick’s 
secret. 

As it grew darker it was discovered that the 


WHAT HAPPENED AND HOW. 


9 


dog Punky had not come home for supper. 
Where was he? With Dick? To lose both 
dog and brother was more than Peter could 
endure ; and he suddenly chokingly blurted 
out, “It is all your fault, Mama, ’cause Dick 
said that you were going to do something to 
him and that he’d run away before he’d let 
you ! ” 

Mrs. Bell turned very white, but said nothing. 
That was Mrs. Bell’s way of doing when she 
would like to say a great deal. And now Peter 
was more afraid than ever. He had told little 
Dick’s secret. He had not kept watch himself, 
and had scared his mother. Because he did not 
know what else to do, he went out of the house 
again to hunt for Dick. Thus when Mr. Bell 
came home he had to go out at once and search 
for two boys. 

It was fully eight o’clock when the bell rang 
and rang, and Peter’s voice was heard outside. 
Then how every one came running into the front 
entry from up-stairs and down-stairs ! 

“ Come quick, out into the back-yard ! ” 
called Peter ; and followed by them all he 
rushed through the hall, down the back-stairs, 
out into the yard, and there in the dog-kennel, 
sound asleep, were Dick and Punky. 

“ How did you find them ? ” asked the news- 
paper reporter, who had heard of the trouble and 
was on the spot writing it up. 

“ I didn’t find them — I just suddenly knowed 
he’d be in the kennel,” said Peter. 


10 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


Then explanations followed, and the police- 
man did not seem to like it at all because the 
scare had turned out such a tame affair ; but the 
newspaper reporter thought it so funny that he 
wrote it all out, with big head-lines, and every- 
body in the city of Boston knew the next morn- 
ing that little Dick Bell, four years did, had 
started to run away because he was afraid 
something was going to happen to him, and that 
he went out of the back-yard when no one saw 
him and wandered about, wondering where to 
go. He did not go far because he grew very 
lame; and as the back-gate was ajar and he was 
very unhappy, he let himself in again, and crept 
into the dog-kennel, where the family dog had 
found him, and there he had cried himself to 
sleep. And the funniest part of it was, that 
when they did find him he forgot to ask what 
was going to happen. 

Yet it did happen just the same. 

The next morning his mother petted him more 
than usual ; and he had an extra nice breakfast, 
and was playing about in the dining-room when 
the Doctor came in and told him he wanted to 
look at his leg more carefully than he ever had 
done. 

Dick did not mind that, as the Doctor was a 
jolly man, and he was used to having his leg 
looked at. And then his Uncle John came in; 
and while Dick was lying flat on his back his 
uncle amused him by dropping bits of candy 


WHAT HAPPENEI) AND HOW. 


11 


into his mouth and telling him jokes, so that 
Dick never thought about what the Doctor was 
doing till it was all done. 

But when Dick tried to get up and couldn’t, 
he found that a long piece of wood had been 
strapped on to his left leg, from his hip to his 
ankle. Then he screamed and scolded, and said 
it wasn’t fair ; and Mrs. Bell, too, said that it 
wasn’t fair, and that if she had a hundred 
lame children she would never do the same way 
again, but tell beforehand. 

“No, Madam, you wouldn’t,” the Doctor 
answered her, “ not if I had the care of those 
hundred children. Dick would have been in a 
high fever if he had known ‘ beforehand,’ while 
now he’ll soon get over his rage and ” — 

At that instant in came a lady with a Berne 
toy-bear ; and in winding it up and seeing it 
dance, Dick forgot about the splint. His uncle 
told him more stories, and soon it was dinner- 
time, when it was so droll to be fed lying down 
that he really began to feel better than he had 
for weeks, as the poor inflamed little hip and 
leg were having a chance to rest. 

By and by his mother explained it all to 
him ; and then the long, narrow basket with its 
mattress was brought in, and he was lifted into 
it and carried up-stairs, and went to sleep as 
happy as a little boy can be who has more 
persons to wait on him than he knows how to 
employ. 

But Peter waited around till the Doctor came 


12 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


again at night; and then he went up to him, and 
with hands in trousers pockets spoke to him, just 
as a soldier should not speak to a general : 

“You didn’t do fair. You should have told 
Dick. I don’t like you 1 ” 


“ifr SON.'- 


13 


11 . 

“MY SON.” 

For weeks and months little Dick lay in his 
basket. He was carried in it up and down 
stairs at every meal, and to visit in different 
rooms with his mother and baby sister. He 
was even carried in it outdoors; for his father 
made a truck, on which the basket exactly 
fitted, and in this way Dick could go about 
with the rest of the children. 

One of his favorite plays was Station Master. 
In this play he had the charge of real and 
make-believe bundles, which the other boys 
carried round on their bicycles and left at 
people’s doorsteps. The game kept him quiet, 
and the others liked it too, and joined in with a 
will ; but sometimes, when they were gone too 
long on their delivery errands, Dick grew cross, 
and would toss his well leg up and down and 
almost over the basket’s edge, for there was no 
fun in being left alone with no one to boss. 

Then he had a birthday while he was in the 
basket; and so many presents were given him 
that he put half of them aside for the next 
birthday, when, as he would be well, he could 


14 


LITTLE niCK^S SON. 


not expect so many. That night little Dick 
prayed, “ Please don’t let me be five so long 
as I was four, and let me be six only one 
month, and seven only one month — then per- 
haps I can catch up even with the other 
boys I ” 

Best of all his good times was the daily hour 
after supper, when he and his mother and Peter 
and the baby sister were in the nursery, and 
played games until it was time to go to bed. 
Then Mrs. Bell gave the last tucking in of the 
sheets and the last words herself. 

On one of those evenings, little Dick said to 
her, looking up from the basket, “ Mama, why 
don’t you ask me why I wanted to run 
away ? ” 

“ Because I know you will tell me when you 
are ready,” said his mother. 

“Well, I’m ready- — and I don’t know. I 
think it was real mean in me to scare you so, 
mama, just ’cause I guessed something was 
going to happen to me. I won’t never do it 
again when I get well, and I eanH do it now, you 
know — so don’t ever worry any more ! I’m never 
going to run away. I just thought I’d go a 
little way so the Doctor couldn’t find me. And 
my son told me I was doing naughty and must 
go right home, and I turned right back ; and my 
son told me to go into Punky’s house, and 
think it all out and see how naughty I was. 
And ’fore I got done thinking, I went to 
sleep.” 


“Jifr -soiv'.” 


15 


Your * son ’ is the best part of you, Dicky,” 
said his mother with a smile. “You had better 
always mind him. But mama’s name for him is 
different from yours.” 

“ He is my son,” objected Dick with em- 
phasis, “ my onty donty son, just as I am yours. 
And he wants things just as I do.” 

“ Does he get them, Dick ? ” 

“ You don’t quite understand, mama — I 
mean the things he wants are things he wants 
me to do, and things he wants me not to do. 
Won’t you tell if I tell you? ” 

“Never, Dicky.” 

“ Well, mama, he tells me when I am naughty 
the things to do to get good again — and I’d 
rather talk with him about it, when I have done 
a naughty thing, than with anybody else. I’m 
going to talk with him now about some things 
— good-night, mama,” and he kissed her as she 
bent close. 

For some time after she left him, Mrs. Bell 
heard her little boy talking to his “ son.” The 
tones were very low, but sounded precisely as 
though two persons were conversing together. 

Little Dick’s “ son ” was the invisible fifth 
member of Mrs. Bell’s family. Dick had 
always had him — how or why none of them 
ever knew. Sometimes the little boy would 
not sit down to table unless a chair was placed 
beside him for his “ son ; ” and oftentimes when 
alone, as his mother knew, he held long converse 
with him. What a doll is to a girl, this “ son ” 


It) LITTLE mCK^S SON. 

appeared to be to little Dick — yet still much 
more than a playmate — a protector also, and 
a monitor. For the last year the child had 
been lame ; and sometimes for an hour together 
Mrs. Bell would hear the sound of the little 
limping steps and the busy, earnest tones of his 
voice, mingling together, until she hardly knew 
whether she were most amused or sad. 

At last, after a great while, the boy in the 
long basket began to say, “ W on’t it be nice 
when I can run about ? ” 

The weeks of the imprisonment, however, 
were nearly over, for one day the Doctor came 
and took off the splint, and little Dick stood up 
for a few seconds. The next day he stood for 
a whole minute, though it was fully four v/eeks 
before he could walk with ease ; but he seemed 
to have great fun in the learning to step again, 
and in talking it over with his “ son.” His 
mother often heard him pacing with uneven 
tread, chatting away cheerily. 

Sometimes he wrote letters to his son,” and 
dropped them into the letter-box, which was 
close to the house, though he was never known 
to stamp them. The postman discovered that 
it was Dick who wrote them, and after that 
brought them back to Mrs. Bell. They were 
always short. One of them read : “ Dick Bell 
is going to be good all the time. Are you 
happy?” 

But when, one day, Dick saw one of his 
notes in his mother’s hands he was indignant. 


“ifr soN.''> 


17 


“ I wrote it just for my son ! ” he said, “ and I 
know he didn’t show it to you, mama ! ” 

Very patiently Mrs. Bell tried to explain to 
the little boy what it meant to mail a letter. 
But again he said as he had before, “ Mama, 
you don’t understand ; I want to tell my ‘ son ’ 
things. Sometimes I tell him just by thinking, 
and sometimes when I want to be sure to re- 
member, myself, I write them down — he 
knows all about why ! ” 

“ But he can’t get it out of the mail, Dicky,” 
said Mrs. Bell, scarcely knowing what it was 
best to say to him. 

“You make me tired, mama; you can’t un- 
derstand.” And he drew such a long sigh that 
Mrs. Bell wished she had not spoken to him of 
the letters ; this one she hid in the secret 
drawer of her desk. Dick never wrote another 
note to his “ son.” 

There was one person who was very much 
afraid of “ Dick’s son,” and that was Peter. 
Peter always objected to ideas he could not un- 
derstand and things he could not see. His 
specialty was a cobbler whom he had under- 
taken to befriend through life. 

The cobbler lived near the back-yard of 
Peters house, and the acquaintance began by 
Peter’s listening to the man’s whistling while he 
was at work. Mrs. Bell’s maid took her boots 
there to be mended, and had got him the 
“repairs” of the family, for she expected some 
day to marry the cobbler, and take care of his 


18 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


motherless little girl. To this Peter objected, 
and interfered all he could ; he had an idea 
that the maid was extravagant, and that it 
would be a bad plan for the cobbler. 

Moreover, Peter had a strong notion that 
molasses, ginger, and water, which he put up in 
little bottles, was better for the cobbler than 
real beer, and for this reason, too, often visited 
him. The cobbler at first was amused, then 
provoked ; and finally, to get rid of taking or 
pretending to take Peter’s beverage, promised 
the boy he would not drink any real beer — 
and he kept his promise. 

The difference between Peter’s cobbler and 
Dick’s “ son ” was that Peter had to watch over 
the grown-up man, and that the “ son ” took 
care of the little boy ; but both cobbler and son 
were helping the boys to grow into resolute 
men. 


PETERS S BOOTS, 


19 


III. 

PETER’S BOOTS. 

Peter was a philanthropist, who wanted to 
make those whom he wished to assist do pre- 
cisely as he planned for them. Dick was a 
poet, who wanted to be let alone, and knew that 
everything would come right in the end, and 
loved to sit by himself. 

Besides the cobbler, Peter had undertaken 
the charge of the cobbler’s little girl, and had 
decided to see that she had an education. He 
scolded her till she cried whenever he knew of 
her being absent from school. 

In the hurry and worry of getting ready for 
Christmas, Peter had not seen his cobbler for 
two days, when at dusk one evening he ran 
out of the yard, into the back alley and round 
to the shop. It was closed. Its single gas jet 
was not burning. Peter knew the side-entrance 
to the room above, where the man and his 
child lived; and he stumbled up the stairs in 
the darlr, pushed open the door without knock- 
ing, and found the little girl on her knees 
before the stove, just putting into it her doll. 
She was crying as if her heart would break. 
By the stove lay a doll’s broken furniture set. 


20 


LITTLE DICK^S SON. 


a crippled Noah’s ark, and a disabled back- 
gammon board. 

“What are you up to?” exclaimed Peter 
severely. 

“Daddy’s sick and cold, and he hasn’t got 
any shoes to mend, and he hasn’t got any 
money, and no wood, and he’s so hungTy ; and 
if he gets warm p’r’aps he won’t be so hungry, 
and so I — oh, dolly, you darling ! — there, 
burn up quick ! ” And she pushed the legs 
of the doll into the stove, where its head al- 
ready was burning, and threw herself in a heap 
on the floor, her little thin frame shaking with 
sobs. 

Peter looked at her like a judge, walked over 
to the bed, pulled down the worn quilt, put his 
hand on the sick man’s head, and felt his pulse 
as if he were a doctor. Then he went back to 
the little girl, and sitting down on the floor by 
her, took off his boots and threw them into the 
fire. 

This being done he strode back to the bed, 
and said, “You must get well. I haven’t any 
boots — you’ve got to make me a pair right 
off!” 

The cobbler sat straight up in bed. The 
little girl also sat up, but only to throw her 
Noah’s ark into the stove, for the feeble flame 
made by the doll had gone out and the boots 
had not yet blazed up. Peter’s feet began to 
feel cold, and he stood stamping to make them 
warm. 


PE TER BOOTS. 


The cobbler was not too sick to understand 
the heroism of his child, or Peter’s plan for 
helping him ; but it all made him sicker, and he 
fell back, dead or faint. As the little girl 
threw in the rest of her playthings she saw by 
the firelight the whiteness of her father’s face. 
Peter, more thoroughly frightened than when 
Dick was lost, ran home in his stockings, and 
tried to insist on the maid going over to the 
shop — at the same time teasing her to promise 
that she would not stay and marry the cobbler. 
“ You wouldn’t make anything by it,” the boy 
argued, “ ’cause he hasn’t got anything to leave 
but his little girl, and I’m going to take care 
of her.” 

The maid complained that Master Peter was 
impertinent, and it ended in Peter’s mother re- 
turning with him. She soon set matters right. 
But not until after she had procured coal and 
wood, and bread and soup, and made the cob- 
bler comfortable, who after all only had a 
severe cold and was very hungry, did Mrs. Bell 
notice that Peter was without his boots. 

“You — ” she began; but the cobbler’s little 
girl, fearing that her protector was to be blamed, 
ran in front of the boy, and between cries and 
shivers told how Peter had burnt up his boots 
to make some work for her father. 

“ It wasn’t half so hard,” interrupted Peter, 
“ as for he^ to burn her doll and playthings to 
get him warm, and the boots were mine just as 
much as her things were hers.” 


22 


LITTLE DlCK^S SON. 


“Who gave the boots to you?” asked Mrs. 
Bell, trying to be stern. 

“ They were given, any way, so they were 
mine,” maintained Peter ; but his mother took 
him home and sent him to bed. She gave him 
hot peppermint, and put a mustard plaster to 
his feet, until he wished he had never burnt 
his boots. However, he was all right the next 
morning. Sometime during the day he wrote 
in his diary : 

“ Burnt my boots. Perhaps it was silly, and 
perhaps it wasn’t. It’s done now. Sha’n’t do 
so next time.” 

Peter’s philanthropy took a more practical 
turn after Christmas. He had had what he 
called a “ perfectly horrid Christmas ” — lots of 
things he did not want. His little brother had 
had a beautiful day — everything he wanted 
and a great deal more besides. So Peter pro- 
posed they should set up a “ rummage counter” 
in the cobbler’s shop, and sell out what they 
did not want, and with the proceeds buy a hat 
for the cobbler’s little girl. He said this would 
be much better than to keep over their gifts 
till next Christmas, then mend them up and 
send them to the Children's Hospital. 

“ I don’t want to give away what’s just been 
given to me,” urged little Dick; “it isn’t 
Christmas-y.” 

“ But you want Nora to have a new hat ? ” 
answered Peter. 

“ Perhaps I do, but I’m not sure I want her 


PETERS S BOOTS. 


23 


to have it that way,” said Dick. “ I’ll ask my 
son.” 

“ Bother your ‘ son ! ’ decide now — right 
off I” commanded Peter. 

Little Dick got up, and walked lame out of 
the room — a trick, or unconscious manner, 
which he had adopted when any one spoke dis- 
respectfully of his “ son,” and which always 
made the speaker wish he had not said any- 
thing. 

Peter sat still, whistled and whittled — his 
resort when affairs did not go to his liking. 

Pretty soon Dick came walking back straight 
as a soldier, and held out his Christmas money 
to Peter. 

“You can have all that,” he said, “and buy 
things for the store. I do want Nora to have 
a hat, but my son doesn’t want me to give any 
things folks have just given me. He says it 
doesn’t seem grateful.” 

Peter counted the money before he spoke. 
It was two dollars in all. “ Why, that will buy 
her a hat without having a store ! ” said he, in 
rather a disappointed tone. 

Dick stood and looked^ at Peter with wide- 
open eyes as he counted it again. “ You can 
have it,” repeated the little fellow, and walked 
away. 

Something had gone wrong with little Dick. 
He could not ask his “ son ” about it, for that 
would not be loyal to Peter. He was sure he 
had done right in giving away the money — that 


24 


LITTLE DICK^S SON. 


had been given him to do with as he pleased. 
Yes, the puzzle was about Peter — about Peter’s 
words. 

At last Dick said to his “ son,” “ I won’t think 
about it. Peter has got his ‘ ways,’ that’s all ; 
it will all come out right.” 


PE TER RUMMAGE SALE. 


25 


IV. 

Peter’s rummage sale. 

Peter was a boy who did not like to be 
thwarted. He had planned for a store in the 
way he thought best ; and Dick had chosen to 
interfere, or rather his “ son ” had done so — 
and whenever he quoted him Dick always re- 
mained perfectly stubborn ! 

A “ rummage sale ” was a sensible thing. 
You rummaged among your possessions, and 
got out whatever you didn’t wish to keep, and 
held a sale, and people who did want them 
came and bought them. Dick’s room and his 
were full of such things. He resolved to have 
the store anyway, and buy Nora a hat, exactly 
as he first planned ; and with Dick’s two dol- 
lars he would work out another scheme, and 
that, too, should be for the benefit of Nora. 

He had just got to “ interest ” in, arithmetic, 
and as yet he cared little for knowledge that 
could not immediately be put to use. So he 
had tried to invent plans to test the advantages 
of interest. And now it had occurred to him 
to set up a bank in connection with the rum- 
mage store, and loan out his little brother’s 
money in small sums at a very low rate of 


26 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


interest, to be computed on each ten cents, 
rather than on a dollar basis ! 

Peter was so sure the idea would “ take ” that 
he decided to consult his teacher and ask her 
aid in his calculations. 

“ Are you sure your mother would like the 
plan ? ” inquired Miss Lewis. 

“ My mother knows everything without seem- 
ing to,” replied Peter ; “ and she lets us boys 
go ahead, and doesn’t interfere if she feels that 
things are going to come out right. Of course 
we never plan on purpose to keep anything from 
her ! ” 

As Miss Lewis knew Mrs. Bell was a very 
wise woman, she showed Peter how to open a 
set of accounts, and to prepare cards to be given 
to those who borrowed money at interest. 
Therefore she was not surprised in walking 
down Eliot Street, a few days later, to see a 
sign in the cobbler’s window (for he had re- 
covered and was doing a thriving business), 
with this lettering: 


to .CocuTV. 


Inside the shop she found Peter’s little brother 
and Nora as salespeople, Peter as banker, and 


PETER RUMMAGE SALE. 


27 


quite a crowd of persons as customers ; for as 
the boy’s plan had become known he had re- 
ceived several contributions for his rummage 
sale. Broken toys he returned with scant 
politeness, and the advice that they be given to 
hospitals as they were not good enough for 
business purposes. There really was such a 
number of people that a policeman halted by 
the door, and Dick was glad to turn to his 
mother for aid, so brisk were the sales. How 
his mother came to be there, little Dick hardly 
knew, except on the general principle that she 
was always where she was most wanted. He 
guessed she must have sent some of the articles 
which were quickly sold, like children’s dresses 
and cups and saucers. 

Then there came a great temptation to Peter, 
the banker. 

So many children wanted to borrow a few 
cents and pay interest, that he saw his gains 
would be considerable, and that if he had a 
larger sum he could loan it all — and thus 
make more money for Nora. But would it be 
right for him to borrow money of somebody, 
loan it out, and trust to repayment by the bor- 
rowers to make it good again ? 

Peter never thought of such a plan until 
Dick’s two dollars were almost gone. He had 
no money of his own with him. He could not 
leave to go home to get it, and he was also far 
from sure that he wished to run any risk with 
his Christmas cash. It was different with his 


28 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


little brother’s money. Dick had given it for 
Nora. 

Then he went on to reason further, that if 
he would not risk his own money ought he to 
risk any other person’s money — especially as 
something might happen to his own money? It 
might be burnt up or stolen, and then he would 
not have a cent left to repay what he had bor- 
rowed, in case the persons borrowing did not 
pay him back ! 

It was dreadful to have to decide so quickly ! 
Peter wanted to think it out while whittling, 
but he couldn’t. Peter could always think 
more clearly if he was whittling. But he was 
so busy making loans that there was no chance 
to stop and whittle for even a moment. And 
now the last five cents of Dick’s money was 
gone; and Tim Jones stood in front of him, ask- 
ing to borrow ten cents at the rate of one cent 
interest a week, for a month. Peter grew hot 
and cold, dizzy and confused. 

“ Make haste ! ” called Tim ; “ don’t you see 
there’s a string of fellows behind me ? ” 

Up shouted Peter in a loud voice : 

“ Bank is closed ! Principal is all loaned ! 
Will open next month with larger capital ! ” 

Peter’s ideas grew clearer as he shouted, 
though there was a general laugh at the an- 
nouncement. But he could laugh too as he 
whistled in his great rejoicing that he had not 
borrowed himself into debt; and his mother 
looked so happy, that it suddenly occurred to 


PETER'S RUMMAGE SALE. 


29 


him, that perhaps the way he was feeling was 
the way Dick felt when his “ son ” had been 
talking to him. 

Meanwhile Nora and Dick had had lots of 
fun, insisting that there were no marked-down 
goods, and that all sales were for cash. 
Peter’s Christmas toys had been rated high in 
a half hope that they would not all be sold. 
Yet they were ; and the rummage articles which 
Mrs. Bell, Miss Lewis, and the neighbors gen- 
erally had contributed brought good prices that 
continued until the last paper doll and tin 
soldier had been sold. Enough was cleared to 
buy Nora both a hat and coat, and the cobbler 
had received so many orders for patching that 
it was just as jolly a time as a jolly Christmas. 

During the sale Dick had become well ac- 
quainted with Nora. He decided that she was 
very nice for a little girl who did not like 
poetry, though he hoped that Peter had never 
spoken to her about his “ son.” With her 
father he formed a lasting friendship that day. 
For the cobbler had a dreamy nature; and 
when he told Dick that as often as he shut his 
eyes he could see beautiful things, the little 
boy knew what was meant as he looked round 
the man’s bare dingy little shop. 

But best of all the “ something ” that had 
lain between him and Peter since the first pro- 
posal for the sale, had vanished. Both boys 
knew it as they went home, and in the alley- 
way slid their hands into each other’s. 


30 


LITTLE DICK^S SON. 


“ I didnH do something,” whispered Peter to 
his mother as she kissed him good night. “ 1 
wanted to — but I didn’t. I don’t want to tell 
you what it was, but 1 guess you know. It’s 
queer, mama, how there are two Peters ; are 
there two everybody’s ? ” 

“ Yes, dear, until one has conquered the 
other for all time,” answered Mrs. Bell. 

“ How does she know everything a fellow 
does or thinks ? ” wondered Peter as she went 
out. 


A SECRET SOCIETY. 


31 


V. 

A SECRET SOCIETY. 

Time went on very quietly for a long while 
after the boys closed out their rummage store. 
There didn’t seem any need of holding another 
sale, as Nora appeared to have plenty of com- 
fortable clothing, nor of starting a new bank. 
All the money which had been loaned had been 
returned ; and at little Dick’s wish both the prin- 
cipal and interest had been put into the savings 
bank for Nora. In fact, it was now Dick who 
looked out for Nora, while Peter considered him- 
self the adviser of both. And certainly it was the 
faith of the two young Bell boys in the cobbler’s 
good intentions that kept the man steady and 
industrious. 

Dick was well now, and in school. Both he 
and Peter felt that they had grown old fast 
since Christmas. Peter had been promoted, and 
was a seventh-grade boy. Little Dick was in 
the fourth grade and doing well. 

Suddenly, just after the Easter holiday, Peter 
had a new plan that made a good deal of trouble 
for himself and for Dick. 


32 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


He began to believe in ‘‘ secret societies,” and 
in the seventh and eighth grade grammar boys 
initiating the third and fourth grade boys into 
their mysteries. He resolved to have one. The 
initiation was to be nothing cruel — a very 
different process from “ hazing ” — much more 
like the doings of Free Masons, he imagined. 
He asked his father many leading questions, and 
became more and more puzzled about right forms 
of initiation for secret societies. At last he 
took into his confidence an eighth-grade boy, 
Bob Lawton. 

First they swore each other to secrecy on a 
hot poker — the scar that would be left on the 
back of the wrist to serve as a reminder of 
loyalty to the Society. They next arranged a 
hand-grip — an interlocking of thumbs, which 
might lead to dislocation of the thumb joint if 
not properly managed. 

Then came the difficult matter of how and 
of when to conduct the initiation of new 
members. 

Bob had visions of partial duckings in horse- 
troughs, of marking a skull-and-cross-bones on 
the forearms of the little fellows, and of taking 
away their credits at the peanut stands. Peter 
objected to such proceedings as too public and 
also as too imitative of the doings of older boys 
— students in college, say. He wanted some- 
thing original but not at all frightening ; some- 
thing which should hurt some, and yet be a 
joke ; and above all, something to which a 


A SECRET SOCIETY. 


83 


policeman could not object in case he should 
find it out. 

“ Let’s make the police think the boys have 
broken their legs, ring up an ambulance, and 
send ’em off to the hospital,” proposed Bob, as 
a compromise to his first plan. 

“ The Mayor would be after us if we tried 
fooling with the ambulances,” answered Peter. 

“ No, he wouldn’t ; my father is in the Com- 
mon Council, and he wouldn’t let the Mayor have 
any money to make a fuss with.” 

“ I’d rather do something different,” urged 
Peter, striving to think of something his mother 
might not strongly disapprove. “ I had thought 
of making ’em eat molasses corn-balls till they 
got disgusted, or of treating us seventh-grade 
boys to ice-cream soda, or of giving us trolley- 
rides and candy till they hadn’t any change 
left.” 

Bob cordially approved of Peter’s plan. 

“ Don’t take in more than one or two fellows 
at a time,” said he. “ Begin with just your 
brother. Let me know when all is ready, and 
I’ll fix him myself.” Then the school-gong 
sounded, and both boys went to their seats in 
the class-room. 

“ Attention ! ” twice called the teacher. Peter, 
who did not seem to hear, sent a splash of ink 
from his ink-well over his desk. She caught 
hold of his hand to stop him. “ What are you 
doing ? ” 

“ Thinking,” said Peter, looking up. 


34 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


“ Take out your paper, write down what you 
are thinking about, and bring it to me,” she 
directed. 

Some of the pupils almost laughed aloud. It 
was droll to have anything going wrong with 
Peter Bell, almost the best boy in the school. 

Peter roused up, and wrote and figured till it 
was time for the next recitation ; and on leaving 
the room at the end of the session, handed in 
his work to the teacher, as usual, and went off 
with Bob Lawton. 

Miss Lewis took home Peter’s sheet with 
others to correct, and found it a strange 
mingling of two words — “ molasses,” “ corn- 
balls ” — with sums in multiplication. 

“ Peter’s always getting up schemes — I’ll 
just watch him and see,” she reflected, and said 
nothing. She met him the next day as if she 
did not suspect anything was wrong, while he 
had never a thought that he had written some- 
thing which was not connected with his lessons. 

The fact was that Peter was greatly troubled. 
Bob Lawton had insisted that it was always 
proper to try experiments on one’s own family 
first, therefore, Dick must be initiated before 
any other boy was elected to membership. 
Peter argued that experiments should begin on 
boys whom one did not like ; anyway, he 
objected to anything being done to his little 
brother Dick. 

“ He has lots of cash, for one thing,” argued 
Bob in his turn ; for since the affair of the bank 


A SECRET SOCIETY. 


35 


little Dick Bell had acquired the reputation of 
being a boy-millionaire. 

Peter thought of Dick’s long illness, and of 
his “ son,” and declared he’d give up the whole 
thing before his brother should be made sick by 
eating corn-balls, or should spend his allowance 
treating big boys. Thereupon Bob pointed to 
the wee scar on Peter’s wrist, and he at once felt 
himself mysteriously obliged to be silent. 

Bob Lawton waited some days. When he 
thought Peter must have forgotten all about the 
Society, he came up to Dick as he left the yard 
at the end of a school-day and proposed they 
should have a trolley-ride. Dick looked at the 
clock, and consented if he could be home in time 
for dinner. “ You’ll pay for me ? ” said Bob 
persuasively, as they entered the car, and Dick 
assented, really proud at being so honored by 
an eighth-grade fellow. 

The ride was short; for this part of the 
“ initiation ” having worked well, Bob was 
eager to try the effect of corn-balls on the new^ 
member, and of soda ice-cream on himself. So 
they turned back, and went into a small shop, 
such as little Dick Bell had never before 
entered. 

“ Now,” said Bob, not quite so persuasively, 
“ you buy me soda ice-cream, and molasses 
balls for yourself, till you have not got any 
money left ! Turn out your pockets ; let’s see 
the inside ! ” 

Dick stared at Bob, but obeyed. He could 


36 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


not find more than fifteen cents, which seem.ed ^ 
to be a very big disappointment to the eighth- 
grade boy. Bob had calculated on two ice- 
cream sodas for himself and five balls for Dick 
— whereas one ball could not make any kind 
of a fellow sick. 

Here Dick’s “ son ” began to whisper ; and 
though the little boy paid for the soda and the 
ball he would not touch the latter. 

“You must!” declared Bob. “You can’t 
get elected into Peter’s and my Secret Society 
if you don’t eat it ! ” He tried to push it into 
Dick’s mouth, but only succeeded in smearing 
his face. “ Eat it ! ” commanded Bob, thrusting 
it forward again, seizing the ball so hard that 
it crumbled. “ Eat it I ” 

“ Don’t you eat it,” whispered Dick’s “ son,” 
loud enough this time for Dick to hear him. 

The man behind the counter did not inter- 
fere ; and again Bob tried force, when there 
came on his hand a big blow which drove the 
soda glass that he was still holding, down on the 
floor, broken to pieces. 

Then the man came round to see what had 
happened, and found Peter calling Bob to ac- 
count and telling Dick to run home fast. Dick 
would not leave the place ; and the man said 
that Peter must pay for the glass, as he was 
the one who had caused the trouble ; else he 
would have all three boys arrested. . 

Peter said he would pay just as soon as he 
and Bob could “ swear off.” 


A SECRET SOCIETY. 


37 


“ Rub your scar upon mine, and the Society 
is broken up and won’t never be again I ” cried 
Peter, with a disdainful glare at Bob. 

The two boys touched wrists back to back, 
saying together, 

“ What never has been 
Never can be.” 

Then Peter meekly paid for the broken glass, 
as the man still had his hand on his shoulder, 
while Bob ran out unseen by all excepting Dick, 
who made way for him. 

The two brothers walked home. 

“ You see,” explained Peter, as they went 
along, “ Bob hasn’t any experience or good 
judgment. He and I wanted to form a Secret 
Society of you fourth-grade boys, and he wanted 
to begin with you, and insisted on it ; and I 
objected because you are my family. And 
when one of the fellows told me he’d seen you 
and Bob get into a trolley, I just took the next 
one and have been chasing you ever since till I 
got you here. See ? Why didn’t you eat that 
corn-ball ? Then we could have had our 
Society all right ! It wouldn’t have hurt you.” 

Dick did not answer. The little fellow had 
grown shy about speaking of his “ son ” as he 
had grown older, though he believed in him and 
relied on him just as much as ever. 

“ Speak, can’t you, when I have taken such 
a lot of trouble about you ! ” insisted Peter. 

“ Because Bob had no right to take me into 


38 


LITTLE DICK^S SON. 


a strange store, and my son told me mama 
wouldn’t like it if I touched anything,” an- 
swered Dick, gaining courage as he spoke. 

That was all that was ever said between the 
brothers on the subject of Secret Societies. It 
was a good many days before Peter and Bob 
spoke to each other at all, and by that time 
Peter had lost his interest in the idea. 

At the end of term-time, when the teacher 
returned the boys’ sheets she asked Peter what 
one of his papers meant. At first, as he looked 
at it, he could not understand it himself. But 
when at last he recollected, he told her frankly 
that he didn’t want to tell her for he came near 
getting into mischief, but didn’t ; and since he 
knew that he had been very ' silly — wouldn’t 
she just trust him for the future ? 

This the teacher would have done without 
the request, for she knew Peter Bell was at 
bottom a good boy. 


THE HURDY-GURDY IN THE PARK. 39 


VI. 

THE HURDY-GURDY IN THE PARK. 

As the brothers grew older, they began to 
bring their little sister Ruth into their com- 
radeship. Both boys were very proud of her, 
though they took her as a matter of course. 
Peter had a dim notion that she was to him 
what Dick’s son was to his brother. At any 
rate, when Peter found himself regarded by 
Ruth as a perpetual hero and infallible, he felt 
more and more constrained to behave as one, 
that he might not disappoint her. Then, too, 
he secretly regarded it as unbecoming the dig- 
nity of a boy not to protect any girl, even if 
she were his sister. 

Ruth had been very shy in making Nora’s 
acquaintance ; but after a candy-pull in the 
cobbler’s kitchen she often ran over to the 
little dwelling up-stairs. There was nothing 
she liked better than to play house at Nora’s. 
It was more fun than to have Nora come to 
her nursery, where it was all make-believe, 
while at Nora’s they really, truly kept house 
and cooked the dinner. 

Of course the boys were too big for these 
girlish doings ; besides, they were now too busy 


40 


LITTLE LICK'S SON. 


at school, and with their various inventions, to 
play with girls anyway; though Peter never 
forgot to call round at the cobbler’s every Satur- 
day evening, under the impression that he had 
better be there to keep the cobbler from yielding 
to any Saturday night temptation to go out 
and spend his money. 

About this time Peter had sought Bob Law- 
ton’s aid, as son of a Common Councilman, in 
regard to a public idea of his own. He had 
got up an indignation meeting among the boys 
concerning the banishment of hand-organs and 
hurdy-gurdies from certain of the city streets 
and parks, and had harangued the crowd. Bob 
had led in cheers, after which a committee of 
three, Peter, Dick, and Bob, had been appointed 
to interview the city fathers for permission to 
have a hurdy-gurdy in a certain park near by. 

“What shall we call ourselves?” asked Bob, 
as they went up in the elevator to the office of 
the chairman, to whom they were to present 
their request. “We ought to have our pictures 
painted just like the Boston boys who went to 
General Gage when the British officers inter- 
fered with the sliding on the Common.” 

“We’re ‘Boston boys,’ if you want a name,” 
answered Peter. “All we ask is our Bill of 
Rights. This is the Era of the Child, I heard a 
man tell my mother last night. We’re going 
in for what belongs to Children I ” 

“ Hand-organs in the streets never shall be 
taken from city children I not if I have any 


THE HURDY-GURDY IN THE PARK. 41 


induence,” declared Bob, “and I think I have 
a little pull ! ” At the same time he pushed 
Dick ahead of them into the office ; for he fancied 
the little boy’s face and manner, if he spoke 
first, would gain their cause. 

Dick, not knowing that he ought to be 
frightened, began at once to tell their story. 
“We don’t want the hurdy-gurdy for our- 
selves,” he said; “ but we do ask it for the 
little fellows and the little girls who can’t go 
to dancing-school, but could have lots of fun 
dancing outdoors, where nobody could see them, 
out in the park, if you’ll please say yes.” 

“Yes, sir,” spoke up Peter; “we boys, who 
have pianos and flutes at home, and know 
what fun it is to have music, think that hand- 
organs and hurdy-gurdies, and all such travel- 
ling outdoor music ought to be provided for 
other children, and be a regular city institution 
always I ” 

“ And we hope you will please say yes,” put 
in Dick earnestly, “ for the little children who 
have no pianos at home, nothing at all but just 
street music, and no room to dance only out- 
doors ! ” 

Bob, who was not much used to public speak- 
ing, strengthened these statements by jerks of 
his head. “ It’s so ! ” he said. 

“ But supposing I did permit a hurdy-gurdy 
in that park where you want it, would you rich 
children support it? Would you give money 
enough? Those poor shavers couldn’t give 


42 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


enough. Could the city rely on you to do it? ” 
asked the chairman, with a twinkle. 

“ Yes,” said Peter, “ we would. We’re going 
to get up a show in our dining-room, and sell 
tickets and make money on purpose for it.” 
Peter knew his mother would permit. 

“ And we’ll send you a complimentary, sir,” 
quickly added Bob. 

“ Very well,” said the gentleman, who was 
both amused and in a hurry. “ I’ll give you 
permission to have a hurdy-gurdy in the Park 
as long as your money lasts.” 

And thus it came about that Dick, who 
secretly aspired to be a theatrical manager at 
some time in his career, set to work and with 
the aid of his family dramatized the fairy story 
of the Frog and the Prinee, and that more boys 
and girls wished to take part than there were 
parts to be taken. Peter, who at present wished, 
when he got through school, to become a boss 
contractor, constructed at one end of the dining- 
room a stage that did not break do wn ; and when 
the play was given Mrs. Bell who was prompter, 
had little to do, for the actors knew their parts 
quite well. More persons came than the room 
and the entry and the stairs could hold. The 
City Father, himself, appeared with his com- 
plimentary tieket and his three children for 
whom he paid full price. 

The children cleared twenty dollars, and the 
hurdy-gurdy was engaged for the coming summer 
season. 


THE HURDY-GURDY IN THE PARK. 43 


Yet all this took time which rightfully should 
have been given to school-work and practising, 
though Dick half excused himself by saying his 
“ son was doing his practice lessons for him on 
the piano. Mrs. Bell could not think that Dick 
was really in earnest. Still the next day, when 
she heard him improvising, as he often did, 
weaving together familiar tunes into a tone 
poem of his own, she wondered if her boy had 
not meant that his son had set him thinking 
about keeping to one’s daily duty, though one 
did have large matters on hand. She had not 
thought it best to crush their public spirit, and 
she wanted them to persist and succeed in things 
they undertook. But she, also was inclined to 
believe that both boys would yet tell her they 
knew they had neglected their studies. 

A few days after the theatricals she found at 
the breakfast table a “ note of hand,” addressed 
to her in a composite writing of the two boys. 
It read : 


tSoCidxvw, OJ^iAaL I . 

’ll! cwocL jay’uD-vro- 

{AAy Co- 7Vh. <0. ISeXt .i20 '\\j O/'Le^ 

\xxAj cctKMA/t o-aUx/ 

tW-ui/O CTV (uu\Yi/ro [axww cLcote^. 

13^. 
jQhcity 13eXt. 

P ji. cJ!t lAv TUO-P COTU OJ^iAaL fxxvt. 


44 


LITTLE DICK^S SON. 


Then Mrs. Bell knew that Dick had been 
sorrj he had neglected his lessons, and that 
when he “ played on the piano ” his regret had 
come out from his heart into the keys. 

Since he had been old enough to reach the 
keys, before even he could stretch an octave, 
Dick had loved to pretend to “ play on the 
piano,” as he called it. But no one had told 
him as yet that in music lay his future. For 
Mrs. Bell believed in doing one’s hard work at 
school before choosing what one would like for 
the future. 

When Peter went up-stairs that night he 
called his mother to him just as he was going 
to get ready to go to sleep — for Peter always 
had to “ get ready ” to do things. When she 
came he whispered to her : 

“ It’s a great deal harder to have character in 
school when you have fifty fellows round all 
wanting you to do something different, than it 
is to have it at home.” 

“ That’s where the victory comes in, Peter,” 
said she. 

“ I know it, mama,” said Peter. “ I have 
found it out.” 

These bedtime whispers from her boys were 
among the most precious things in Mrs. Bell’s 
life. 


THE COBBLER'S WHALE. 


45 


VII. 

THE cobbler’s WHALE. 

There was no further talk of wanting to be 
this or that kind of a man on the part of the 
Bell boys, or to do this or that for the “ public 
good,” after the hurdy-gurdy business had been 
settled. One full taste of a thing, like the 
bank, and the rummage store, and the secret 
society, always satisfied Peter. Both boys 
buckled their attention on to their school work, 
and when June ended were ready for their pro- 
motion, each skipping a class into the one next 
ahead. 

A long, beautiful summer came as usual be- 
tween the end of one school year and the begin- 
ning of another. Mr. and Mrs. Bell had a 
summer cottage on a low cliff, overlooking the 
sea, where the family had been almost ever 
since Dick could remember. When he began 
to get old, as he called it, he had pleaded with 
his mama to let him have a house for himself 
and his son. “ Any kind of a real boy wants a 
home of his own,” he said. So he and Peter 
had constructed a shanty, at some distance from 
the cottage, that afforded a place of refuge by 
day, provided there was not a storm. 


46 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


It was jolly work building it ; but after it was 
completed Peter soon tired of it, and preferred 
to play with other boys. To Dick the shanty 
was an enchanted palace, where his son and he 
used to “ converse * ’ for hours at a time. 

It had come to be an annual custom to have 
a visit from the cobbler’s Nora. She made the 
shanty a more real abode ; for then the children 
cooked many meals on its little stove, always 
taking care to leave something over from each 
meal for “ Dick’s son.” Nora felt sure that this 
person whom she never saw was nobody in the 
world but the family dog, P unkey. 

This summer Mrs. Bell proposed that the 
cobbler, who was not as strong as usual, should 
close his shop in town for a month, and come 
down and take a fisherman’s hut close by the 
beach which fringed the cove, and keep house 
there with Nora. When she sent to the depot 
for his trunk, she found he had brought along 
his cobbler’s bench and his kit of tools. She 
learned from him that Peter had written him 
that the boys and men for miles around had 
promised to give him their boots to patch. So 
much work had his protector engaged that he 
had no vacation, save as he breathed the salt 
air and worked in the sunshine ! 

Before he became a cobbler Nora’s father had 
been on a whaling voyage, and before that he 
had done sundry other wonderful things. There- 
fore it was natural to him to spin yarns, and 
in turn to lazily listen to the fishermen who 


THE COBBLER'S WHALE. 


47 


were his neighbors, and often disgruntled with 
him because he didn’t appreciate the magnitude 
of the business they did in porgj oil. To the 
cobbler their fishing did seem a small affair, in 
contrast with the number of whales he had 
speared and the hogsheads of oil he had ex- 
tracted. 

The cove was a favorite visiting-place for 
herring and other small fish ; and the bay was 
often bright at night, as if lit up with fireflies, 
when the little rowboats, with shining balls of 
cotton saturated with kerosene oil and fastened 
to their prows, went skimming over the water, 
the men dipping up herring. But the beauty 
of the scene and the supper of baked beans on 
the beach after the evening’s work was over, 
could not equal the glory of a single whale- 
hunt, according to the cobbler. 

What, therefore, was the cobbler’s gratitude 
and amazement when, early one morning, there 
lay stranded on the beach a young whale, cast 
up by the waters in the storm of the previous 
night ! It was exactly like the whales in the 
Arctic Ocean, the cobbler assured the boys. 
Over and over again was the creature meas- 
ured, and each time the number of gallons of 
oil that it contained grew greater, until the 
fishermen became envious of the cobbler’s 
wealth; for as he had first seen it, perhaps 
the whale did belong to the Bells’ city shoe- 
maker ! If so, where would the man be likely 
to cut it up — there on the beach or at the fish- 


48 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


houses around the cove, to which it could be 
towed ? 

The cobbler was not at all sure of his rights. 
He fancied, secretly, that like the air, the whale 
might belong to everybody. He seemed in- 
clined to put off the cutting-up which the fisher- 
men were eager to witness, especially as the 
children had claimed the whale as their chute, 
and in their bathing-dresses found great fun in 
sliding up and down his greasy back into the 
sea. Peter had roped a box onto the creature’s 
head Avhich gave so much steeper a declivity 
for them to descend that the sliders always 
ended by turning a somersault at the bottom of 
the shallow water and coming up again well 
soused. 

Peter, as the cobbler’s champion, claimed for 
him the full ownership of the whale. Dick had 
much the same feeling as the cobbler’s, and was 
sure the great ocean fish belonged to no one. 
Ruth and Nora wanted the delightful monster 
kept forever as a plaything. At last it was 
agreed that the whale should be towed to the 
fish-houses and be cut up, and that each man 
who helped should have an equal share in the 
oil. 

“Do it to-night — there’s a big blow com- 
ing ! ” argued one of the fishermen, as soon as 
the decision had been reached. 

“Wait till the tide turns,” said the cobbler, 
“ then all come down.” 

So the fishermen went home, and waited for 


THE COBBLERS S WHALE. 


49 


the tide. When they came back they found 
that the whale had gone out to sea. 

“ It’s a mean trick on us of that old land- 
lubber ! ” exclaimed the angry men, and can- 
celled their orders for patching. 

The cobbler took their abuse mildly. When 
Ruth and Nora questioned whether the whale 
were alive and had swum off, or if he had truly 
been alive when they had slid down his back, 
he shook his head. “ Who can say ! ” he re- 
marked. 

Peter heard the question and answer. He 
whistled, and concealed his suspicions, yet se- 
cretly he liked the cobbler better than ever. 

But because of all the talk the Bell boys felt 
called upon to guard the old man by day and to 
sleep in his hut for three nights, lest some of 
the fishermen, who thought they had been 
cheated out of a great quantity of whale-oil, 
should burn down the hut. 

However, the whale was soon forgotten and 
Peter began to find life at the cliff rather dull, 
and to wish something more would happen. 


50 


LITTLE LICK'S SON, 


VIIL 

THE SOUNDING-BOARD. 

Peter, for some time, had wanted to do 
something which he never could forget as long 
as he lived, and could talk about when he 
became an old man. He felt that all old men 
should have at least one surprising exploit to 
relate. Dick would be no use at all to him in 
such a quest for adventure, as whatever he 
would suggest would be like make-believe 
poetry. Luckily, as Peter at once felt. Bob 
Lawton came to make a visit, and both boys 
determined that the week should be marked by 
some exploit that would set the neighborhood 
ringing with their fame. Dick was not taken 
into their plans, as Peter was sure his “ son ” 
would interfere. 

Together Bob and Peter explored the region, 
but found nothing to do that could be termed 
remarkable. When Sunday came, it was a day 
off in their plans, for Mrs. Bell expected them 
both to go to church. 

The meeting-house, as it was called, was an 
old-fashioned wooden building mth galleries, 
and a high pulpit which had a sounding-board 


THE SOUNBING-BOAEB. 


51 


over it. Many a time, summers before, when 
Peter was younger than now, when the sexton 
had been busy in the church on Mondays, had 
Peter gone up the steep pulpit stairs, and stood 
under the sounding-board, and peered up into it 
with a thrilling, glorious fear that it might fall 
down and he would have to crawl out somehow. 
The idea always fascinated him, and he had 
often felt sure that the sounding-board was to 
play an important part in his life. He remem- 
bered this, as he sat in his mother’s pew that 
morning, his eye chancing to fasten on the 
sounding-board. 

Peter was feeling impressed with Bob’s at- 
tentive manner during the sermon, when sud- 
denly Bob gave liim a punch with his elbow. 
Peter looked about ; but as he did not see any- 
thing to notice, he concluded Bob meant to say 
that he had got an idea. 

When the people rose during the singing of 
the last hymn, he saw Bob looking to the right 
and to the left of the pulpit, as if scanning the 
distance between it and the sounding-board, 
and seeming very curious and interested. 

But Bob was able to give Mrs. Bell the text 
and the first head of the sermon when she 
gathered the children round her in the after- 
noon ; and not until this Sunday hour was over 
did they find themselves alone together. 

“ What’s up? ” asked the boy host. 

“ Oh ! you noticed, did you, that I punched 
you in the sermon ? ” said tlie guest. 


52 


LITTLE EICK^S SON. 


“ You had an idea, hadn’t you ? ” Peter an- 
swered him. 

“ How many feet,” said Bob, “ do you calcu- 
late it is from the top of the pulpit, where the 
minister put his sermon, up to the edge of that 
sounding-board ? ” 

“ It must be every bit of six feet. Do you 
mean to say that you can jump straight up in 
the air?” Peter had quickly guessed at what 
Bob was driving. 

“ No ; but if I could get that sounding- 
board tipped to one side a foot or two, and you 
boosted me another foot or two, I guess I could 
get on to the outside of it, and haul you up after 
me. And then we might have to stay there a 
week, you know, till we were found. Wouldn’t 
there be a scare ! How’ll that do ? ” 

Peter whistled low and long. “ We’ll get 
onto it somehow I It won’t be any real harm 
if we don’t do it on a Sunday. The sexton is 
such a slow, old, blind man we shall have plenty 
of chance to-morrow while he’s cleaning up. 
The meeting-house is always open Monday. 
Probably we shall end by jumping off when we 
get hungry enough and breaking our legs. 
Hoorah ! we’ve got it ! ” 

Considering the real peril of their plan, the 
boys behaved very well. Not even Dick paid 
any heed when they left the house after break- 
fast the next morning. They found the meet- 
ing-house open as they expected, and the sexton 
down cellar. 


THE SOUNBING-BOAEI). 


53 


How they got on to the top of the sounding- 
board was never quite clear to either of the 
boys afterwards. Peter said it was not so high up 
after all, and that all he had to do was to jump 
up from the pulpit^top, catch hold of a jutting 
corner, pull himself around it and then on top, 
though he had to jump three times before he 
caught hold of anything. Bob said he clam- 
bered to the narrow window-sill, which was 
higher up than the pulpit, and then flung him- 
self down, steering his course and trusting to 
luck, till he caught hold of the top of the 
sounding-board. At any rate both boys landed 
safely on it. 

And then what? 

Why, nothing in particular. They lay on 
their stomachs sprawling, their arms and legs 
extended, this seeming the only way to stay on. 
They were not slipping at all, but felt they must 
not try to stir. The dust of years seemed to 
have grown into hard nodules ; and these lumps 
served as a sort of brace to their feet, otherwise 
it was a matter of simply lying flat and not 
moving. 

It wasn’t very interesting to lie flat on a 
sounding-board, but they remained there some 
^ time, thinking hard. Each knew it was im- 
possible for him to go back the way he had 
come. It would probably be dangerous to 
jump. They really did not crave to break their 
legs. The pulpit was in the way of there being 
any good landing-spot. Both knew the great- 


54 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


est impossibility of all was to move about a 
little. Not a word had either spoken. They 
simply had lain there, and filled their lungs 
with the ancient dust. 

All at once, slowly but surely, each boy felt 
himself loosening, and down he fell, uninjured, 
in a heap on the pulpit floor, so that it was a 
most inglorious moment. They were silent, in 
their mutual surprise. 

The jar of their fall brought up the deaf old 
sexton. For a moment the cloud of dust that 
filled the pulpit space benumbed his wits. He 
was slowly recovering them as the two dusty 
boys came swiftly down the pulpit stairs. 
Most unexpectedly he laid hold upon them, and 
shook them, and then shook them again. 

“Now,” said he, “go home! go home! I 
suppose one of you is Peter Bell ! I don’t 
know where you’ve been, but I’d suppose you’ve 
been on the sounding-board by the dust, if it 
was a possible thing ! Go home, anyway ! ” 

The exploit got out ; but Bob went back to 
Boston the next week, and Peter soon tired of 
it, and couldn’t see why he ever did such a 
senseless thing. His mother was ashamed of 
him, and never in all her life alluded to the 
adventure, and that fact did a good deal to cure 
Peter of folly. 


A NEWSPAPER, 


55 


IX. 

A NEWSPAPER. 

Vacation-time always brought out the dif- 
ferences between Peter and Dick. Both were 
fond of outdoor life ; but while Peter found 
in the country an opportunity for adventure, 
the beauty all around made Dick thoughtful 
and more inclined than ever to stay by himself. 
He liked to fancy that by and by he should 
write a book, and already had planned its dedi- 
cation to his mother, smiling often to himself at 
the thought of her happy surprise when she 
should read the title-page. 

He would have liked to keep a journal at 
full length, but his mother advocated a diary of 
four lines to a day. There was little satisfac- 
tion in such a compressed record of his moods 
and thoughts. So he took refuge in what he 
called “ storiettes,” and had a desk too full of 
them to be locked. “ A storiette,” he explained 
to his mama, was about other people, while a 
journal was about one’s self — and after all 
it wasn’t needed when one had a son to talk 
with. 


56 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


“ Dick}'',” she remarked one day, “ your ‘ son ’ 
keeps you from going with other boys.” 

“No, he doesn% mama- — he only keeps me 
straight with other boys. It’s awful, mama, to 
be a boy without a ‘ son,’ — boys have such diffi- 
cult times.” 

“Has Peter a ‘son’?” she asked, always 
wishing to more fully understand her boys. 

“ I think he has, but Peter doesn’t know it,” 
Dicky answered. 

“ Who is your son, Dicky ? ” she asked, wish- 
ing for Dicky’s own idea of him. 

“ I don’t know, mama. He is the best part 
of me. He is something inside of me. He 
isn’t exactly me, but he is part of me. Didn’t 
you have a ‘ son ’ when you were a little girl ? ” 

Mrs. Bell’s face saddened, as she thought 
how much easier it would have been for her in 
her childhood if she had had the same sense of 
a presence within her, helping her, understand- 
ing her, restraining her, guiding her, which 
made Dicky the dearest, bravest, sunniest, 
little fellow she had ever known. 

“ Don’t get blue, mama,” he said putting his 
arm round her, seeming to know she felt sad. 
“ I want to tell you about a plan I’ve made. 
It isn’t a big thing like Peter’s plans — mine is 
a small thing. I want you to start a family 
newspaper, be editor, and let Ruth and me 
write leading articles — isn’t that what they 
call them ? — and have Peter do the head-lines, 
and everybody else be special correspondents. 


A NEWSPAPER. 


57 


Don’t look so surprised, mama — you sha’n’t if 
you don’t want to, only it will do Ruth’s spell- 
ing lots of good. She talks well enough for a 
girl, and she always says something funny when 
she writes her Christmas thanking-notes — but 
she spells awfully ! ” 

Unfortunately Ruth came into the room just 
in time to surmise that the plan was something 
for her improvement. Consequently she was 
so opposed to it that it took much coaxing on 
Dick’s part to persuade her to have a part in it. 
When she did consent, she wanted to begin 
right off. Mrs. Bell listened as the two chil- 
dren talked. “ You don’t mean to print it, do 
you ? ” she asked. 

“Oh 110,^ mama!” answered Dick. “We’ll 
have it on ruled note-paper so the lines will 
keep us straight. It will be written privately, 
not published ; and it need not come out every 
week, only when we feel like it, and Peter’s 
got ready a column of jokes. I’ve enough note- 
paper to start with.” 

“Then do start,” cried Ruth, “instead of 
talking ! You tell us what to say first, mama ! ” 

“What are you going to call the paper?” 
Mrs. Bell inquired. 

“ Oh, mama!” cried Ruth again, “ don’t go to 
work in that regular manner, just like having a 
place for everything and everything in its place ! 
You just give us something to write about.” 

“Well,” Mrs. Bell replied, “you each write 
a story about different kinds of children, and 
we’ll have them as starters.” 


68 


LITTLE BICK^S SON. 


Ruth and Dick looked doubtful ; but they 
hastened to get the paper, and ruled two or 
three sheets in halves, so as to make double 
columns, and after much sharpening of pencils, 
really began to write. Ruth had to jump up 
several times to look out of the window to see 
how to spell, she said ; yet the more she wrote, 
the less she started up, till finally she shouted, 
“ Mine’s done — want to hear it? ” 

Her mother nodded. Dick looked up, much 
as if he had been dreaming. 

“Well, it’s all about two boys, two kinds as 
you said, only both were — I mustn’t tell you 
beforehand. I’ll just read it.” 

Ruth called her story, “ Two Kinds of the 
Same Kind of Boy.” 

“ Once upon a time there were two don’t-care 
kind of boys. Only they were different. One 
of them was named Charlie, and he liked to 
2)lay jumping over the railroad tracks. The 
men told him not to ; and he said ‘ Who cares ? 
I don’t care, I’m going to do it again ! ’ And 
he jumped, and the engine came along before he 
knew it, and when he did know it, he was hurt 
very bad. 

“ The other boy’s name was John, and he 
never had any real feet ; and he said, ‘ I don’t 
care, I’m going to be a boy just the same ! ’ 
And he did, and went to college and got along 
first-rate just because he didn’t care much be- 
cause he hadn’t much feet.” 

Peter, unnoticed by the children, had stopped 


A NEWSPAPER. 


59 


by the window to see what was happening. 
He clapped as Ruth ended ; but he took away 
the charm of his applause, by saying, “ Ruth 
knew who those two don’t-care boys were. She 
couldn’t have made up the story. You didn’t 
have to look far to find them, did you, now ? ” 

Mrs. Bell thought best not to notice Ruth’s 
red cheeks and Peter’s lack of tact. “Now let 
us have Dick’s story,” she said. 

“ Mine isn’t very long, it wouldn’t come,” 
said Dick. “It’s about what you told us, 
mama — wanting to do things when we don’t 
want to, and I made it up this way : 

“ ‘ Ought ’ is a short word for all these words, 
I-don’t>want-to-but-I-must-because-it-is-right; and 
‘ want ’ is a short word for ‘ I-like-to-do-it-be- 
cause-it-is-good-fun.’ Then I make a compound 
of these words, ought- want, and it is — well, no 
matter. That’s all,” concluded Dick, turning 
away. 

“ That isn’t fair !” exclaimed Peter. “ You’ve 
got to finish.” 

“ I’ll show it to mama ; I can’t to any one 
else,” said Dick, and his face took on that far- 
away look which always obliged Peter to 
whistle. 

Mrs. Bell drew Dick to her and read, “ It is 
my son’s name.” She glanced at him, and 
mother and boy understood each other. But to 
hide what they both felt, she proposed that 
Peter should be editor-in-chief of the family 
paper, and manage its business. 


60 


LITTLE DICK^S SON. 


“ I can’t, mama,” Peter objected. “ It isn’t 
that I don’t know how, but I’m too busy ; you 
know we go back to town soon, and I’ve got a 
lot of things to finish first. Besides, family 
papers don’t amount to much ; there isn’t any 
money in them. It’s just like Dick to get up 
an idea that hasn’t much fun or much money 
in it.” 

“ I told mama in the beginning that it 
wasn’t a big idea like yours — and now I don’t 
want to have anything to do with it ! ” said Dick 
in a dignified broken-hearted little way. 

“ Oh, Dicky, I didn’t mean anything — I 
didn’t, honor Bright ! ” said Peter, sorry. 

“ Yes, you did, Peter. But it’s no matter.” 

“ It is matter too ; I didn’t think what I said.” 

“ But you couldn’t have said it without think- 
ing it ; and it’s true, Peter.” 

In this manner Dicky would pursue the truth ; 
and Peter, sorry, never knew how to end the 
talk, except by leaving the room. 

More than once Dicky, in those early days, 
went to his mother with the puzzle of what his 
“ son ” said, when judging between him and 
Peter. 

“ My ‘son’ says I ought not to be hurt when 
the truth is spoken, but tliat Peter ought not 
to have spoken the truth.” 

“Your ‘son’ understands, Dicky,” Mrs. Bell 
would say, smiling down in his grieved, puzzled 
face ; “ and if your ‘ son ’ understands, it is the 
same, almost, as though you did too, Dicky.” 


A NEWSPAPER. 


61 


Then Dicky would smile too, a little. “ Any- 
way,” he said this time, “ I have forgiven Peter, 
and forgiven me. Sometimes I can forgive 
Peter and can’t forgive me. Do you under- 
stand, mama ? ” 

Mrs. Bell understood very well. She put 
Dicky’s story in her pocket until after lunch, and 
then she put it in her desk. And then she and 
Dicky went out to walk on the beach. And 
there was nothing further ever done about the 
newspaper. 


62 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


X. 

DOUGHNUTS. 

This year the unwillingness of the Bell 
family to move back to town was stronger than 
usual. Perhaps it was because the children 
had been older this year than ever before. Cer- 
tainly Mrs. Bell had had less worry than any 
other summer lest they would get drowned, or 
be kidnapped, or break their legs. She had 
grown young, and Mr. Bell had grown jolly, 
and Peter and Dick and Ruth had become 
“ more responsible,” as the little girl herself 
termed it. 

The cobbler had rented the hut for another 
season and gone. He had made quite a sum of 
money, and had lived down the dislike that had 
fallen on him because of the escape of the whale. 
Nora he had taken with him. 

The Bells were expecting to go within a 
week, when something occurred which tested 
the good judgment of both Peter and Dick. 

For several days they had felt that the cob- 
bler’s hut had an occasional inmate. Yet both 
w’^ere sure the fastenings had not been touched. 
One morning the truant officer of the county 


DOUGHNUTS. 


63 


had been seen searching the woods near their 
house, and had asked questions. Within two 
days a story grew from the alleged truancy of 
a single boy into the rampant doings of a gang 
of thieves ! Still no one had missed anything. 
The officer had been to the Bells, and got the 
key of the cobbler’s hut, had opened it, and had 
not found a trace of vagrants. 

Peter, however, felt there was “ something in 
the air,” and that there was chance for him to 
become a famous detective, and was not at all 
ready to go back to town. His mother sternly 
forbade his prowling round the woods at night 
— but she had not said anything about being 
outdoors at dawn. 

Now, whatever it was that was outdoors had 
become mysteriously connected, in Peter’s mind, 
with the disappearance of doughnuts and apple- 
tarts. If each of the children had eaten 
three apiece and their elders two, that would 
have been only thirteen doughnuts and thir- 
teen tarts ; yet twenty-five cymbals had been 
fried, and seventeen tarts baked, for Peter had 
counted. And if the maid, who always said 
she never ate dainties, had eaten the rest, she 
ought to have been sick, and was not. 

Dick begged Peter to cease investigations — 
they would surely lead to something they need 
not know. 

“ Don’t you want to know the truth? ” asked 
his brother. 

“ Not just for the sake of knowing. I’d like 


64 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


to help a fellow who’s got into a fix,” answered 
Dick. 

“ Then you come out with me at three 
o’clock, sharp, to-morrow morning, and maybe 
you’ll have a chance. I know doughnuts are 
mixed up in it, ’cause P unkey smelt the crumbs 
somewhere outdoors, and I picked ’em off the 
end of his nose.” 

This aroused Dick. He admired Peter’s sa- 
gacity — it seemed like a detective’s — and 
promised to say nothing, but to be on hand. 

It was barely dawn when the boys crept down 
stairs the next morning, unheard by any of the 
household, and planted themselves among the 
bushes around the cobbler’s hut. Immediately 
there was a movement. They scarcely breathed, 
as low down on the ground they saw a head, 
shoulders, body, legs of somebody creep from 
somewhere — and before the form had chance 
to rise each boy had a hand on its shoulders. 

Scared beyond the power of speech, the pris- 
oner fell on his knees ; and as the sun rose, light- 
ing up the scene, Peter and Dick beheld the 
stupid, kind face of weak-minded Billy, a boy 
they knew well. 

“ Why, where on earth did you come — ? ” 
But even as Peter was asking the question, 
down he sank out of sight ! 

Dick, terrified, felt himself going too, and 
jumped aside, but not losing hold of Billy, who 
began to grin. 

Dick shook him, but would not let him loose. 


DOUGHNUTS. 


65 


He must get Peter out before he sank through 
to the other side of the world. Again he shook 
Billy, and Billy blubbered forth, “ Promise you 
won’t shut me up, and I’ll get him for you.” 

“ I promise,” said Dick. “ Quick now ! ” 

“ Then you’ll have to let me go, so I can I ” 
begged Billy, twisting to get away. 

“ No, I sha’n’t. I’ll hold on to you until you 
get him. Where is he ? ” 

“I’ll have to be let to go down so I can 
speak to him,” insisted Billy. 

“No, you tell me and I’ll tell him,” said 
Dick, alarmed at the idea of losing sight of the 
boy for an instant while Peter was lost. 

“Well, then, tell him to go right along the 
path down in there till he comes to the opening 
where the brook runs into the cove I ” 

Dick called this out clearly and sharply twice. 
No one answered. Peter must have sunk out 
of hearing. Dick thought he would plunge in 
after him, but he tried in vain to find the spot 
where his brother had disappeared. Again he 
shook Billy, a bigger lad than himself, still 
dragging him along. He knew the poor fellow 
well, and that to shake him hard was sometimes 
the only means of getting him to speak. 

Billy smiled cunningly as he saw Dick trying 
to examine the ground among the bushes. But 
either the utter misery on Dick’s face, or the 
firm grip on his shoulder, appealed to him. 

“ You say you promise not to tell on me ? ” 
he repeated. 


66 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


“ Of course I won’t,” said Dick, with a tighter 
clutch of the ragged shoulder. 

“ You follow me, and we’ll get round in ’fore 
he comes out,” said Billy, and started to run as 
fast as he could, being held. The distance was 
really but a few feet, as Billy had said ; and be- 
fore he and Dick had had time, after clambering 
down the bank to the cove, to follow up the 
brook, they saw Peter crawling on his hands and 
knees out from the bushes, along the bed of the 
brook, covered with mud and slime. 

“ So there is a cave up in that bank some- 
where ! ” exclaimed Dick. 

Billy laughed ; but Peter threw himself on 
him, and would have pummeled him if Dick had 
not pushed him off and held him at bay, with a 
strength he had not dreamed he possessed. 
“ Let him alone — it’s mean to knock him 
down, Peter, when he told me what to tell you 
so that you could get out ! ” 

“ You didn’t tell me anything! ” said Peter. 

“ I did — I told you to follow the path till 
you came to the brook ! And besides he 
brought me here.” 

But Peter doubled up his fists. 

Then Dick, who had again caught hold of 
Billy, threw his brother down, and then dumped 
Billy on the ground and himself between them, 
holding both fast. 

Dick had taken command of affairs, and was 
going to have fair play. 

“Now you, Billy, speak first!” he com- 
manded. 


DOUGHNUTS. 


67 


“ Will he promise too? ” 

“ Yes/’ said Dick, answering for his brother, 
who was now the most dazed of the three boys. 
“ Begin ! ” And again he shook Billy. 

“ Lem’me go,” cried out Billy. 

“ Not till you have told us everything — all 
about the cave Peter has been in, and what you 
have been about.” 

Billy began to whimper. “ I hain’t got any 
home like other fellows, and I can’t stand going 
to school and doing chores — it most killed me 
— and I ran away.” 

“Well?” urged Dick, bracing him up with 
another friendly shake. 

“ I hid in the cave, and Mary Ann kept me. 
I’ve been there most a week.” 

“ Our Mary Ann ! ” shouted both boys. 

“ She knowed me well,” said Billy, “ and she 
knowed my father ’fore he died ; and when she 
seed me at the circus she axed me my name, 
and she treated me first-rate ever since.” 

“ Why don’t you want to go to school ? ” in- 
quired Peter, whose wrath was subsiding. 

“ ’Cause I be foolish,” said poor Billy. “ I 
ain’t like other boys.” 

“How did you know there was a cave?” 
asked Dick. 

Billy was silent till shaken. 

“ My father told me. He and I staid there 
when they wanted to ’rest him. He’s dead, 
and I wish I was dead.” 

Then Billy began to cry so piteously, and 


68 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


his clothes had fallen asunder and showed such 
a thin bony frame, that Dick put his arms 
around him, just as if he were a baby, and tried 
to comfort him. 

Peter, who felt it was high time for him to 
become master of the situation, proposed they 
should go back and examine the place where he 
had fallen in. As they went Billy, walking 
along between, and not trying to escape, said 
that whenever it was high tide, so that the sea- 
water flowed up over the bed of the brook where 
he usually went in, he came round to an opening 
in the ground up there among the bushes. He 
told them he had been dreadfully afraid the 
truant officer would stumble over the spot, and 
fall down inside, just as Peter had; for when he 
used that entrance he couldn’t always get the 
turf and stones and dead-wood pulled across 
just right. 

“ And supposing he had fallen in when you 
were in there too ? ” said Peter. 

“ I’d fit and kept him there. I’d hurt him 
enough, anyway, to last till I got out.” 

“ And what would you have done about him 
then ? ” asked Dick. 

“ I’d told Mary Ann there was a man in there 
— she knows how I get in and out — she’d 
seen to him ! ” 


DICK^S CHARGE. 


69 


XL 

dick’s charge. 

As Billy was explaining all this to the two 
boys — for feeling he was among friends he had 
grown talkative — Mary Ann was seen coming 
along with her apron full. In her fright at be- 
holding the boys she dropped the doughnuts, 
tarts, bread and cheese, which she was carrying, 
but didn’t run. 

Her tale was very short. But Peter and 
Dick gathered that from the very first moment 
she set her eyes on Billy at the circus, when 
Mrs. Bell had let her go, she knew he was the 
son of her old beau who went off and married 
another girl. But that wasn’t Billy’s fault; 
and when she heard the truant officer was after 
him, she felt lonesome for him and hunted him 
up, and one night had found him in the woods, 
and he told her his trouble and where he was 
going to hide. So she had brought him his 
food — “ only a little mite ” — each morning be- 
fore she began her work. 

“ Well, the game’s up now,” said Peter, and 
turning upon Billy used more detective lan- 
guage. “ You just come along with me ! ” 


70 


LITTLE DICK^S SON. 


Billy instantly made for the opening into the 
cave. 

“ It isn’t any use — we know now how to get 
you ! ” shouted Peter, jerking him back. “ One 
of us will go up the brook, and the other will 
go down the hole in the bushes. We can get 
you any time.” 

Billy knew they could. He trembled so 
violently that Peter could scarcely believe he 
was a boy of any kind. Even Mary Ann’s 
word that the truant officer thought Billy had 
gone off for good, and so had given up the hunt, 
failed to quiet the poor little fellow. 

Only Dick seemed to know how Billy felt. 
He took off his coat and put it over the boy, 
and fed him doughnuts, talking to him as if he 
were sick, yet gently leading him toward the 
house. Once there, Mary Ann claimed her 
right to see to his breakfast and to “ fix him up 
generally.” So the boys left him in her charge 
and sought their mother. 

“ What are you going to do ? ” she asked 
when they had both interrupted each other to 
the end of their story. 

Peter was silent. “ Mama,” said Dick after 
a pause, that seemed long to all of them, “ I 
want to take him to bring up, just as Peter has 
the cobbler. You said Mary Ann might stay 
here this winter to look after the place. Billy 
will be handy for her ; and I’ll get it fixed with 
the truant officer and the school so he’ll be 
all right, and I’ll come down Thanksgiying, 


DICK^S GHABGE. 


71 


Christmas, and Easter, and see how he’s getting 
on, and I’ll write him letters all the time. 
Please, mama, mayn’t I ? ” 

“ What will your father say ? ” 

‘‘ Just what you do — he always does,” said 
Dick, smiling at her. “ Now you fix it up with 
Mary Ann, and I’ll fix it up with Billy.” 

“ Dick, you must not say a word to him, or 
to any one, until your father and I have talked 
over the matter.” 

Dick kissed her and went off, sobered by his 
sudden self-appointed responsibility. Peter was 
silent. The adventure had ended in a very 
unsatisfactory way. They had found neither a 
counterfeiter’s den nor a smuggler’s cave, not 
even a hiding thief; there had been no des- 
perate, thrilling struggle ; and he was not even 
to have the excitement of holding Billy prisoner 
while he sent a letter to the truant olficer to 
come and take him away — thanks to Dick ! 
Peter thought it likely that Dick’s “ son ” had 
concocted the plan. 

Mary Ann settled the affair. She proposed 
a plan much like Dick’s to Mrs. Bell that same 
morning before Mr. Bell returned — that as 
there had been some talk of her staying in the 
country that winter, Billy should stay with her 
and get enough to eat, and when he felt like it 
go to school. “ You see, ma’am, I knowed his 
father, so I’m fond of the boy already. He’ll 
have wits enough when he’s fed up. I’ll be 
responsible for him.” 


72 


LITTLE DICK^S SON. 


“ Dick wants to be his guardian,” observed 
Mrs. Bell. 

“ I haven’t no objection to that,” said Mary 
Ann. “ That needn’t stand in the way. Billy 
likes him — he’ll be a help to Billy.” 

“ And Billy will be a help to Dick,” thought 
Mrs. Bell ; for she secretly hoped that the 
practical care of a fellow weaker than himself 
in every way would tend to lessen Dick’s 
dwelling so much in solitude with his imagi- 
nary “ son.” 

Billy knew nothing for some time of these 
pleasant plans. He was happy in being clean, 
well-fed, and well-housed, and followed Dick 
about the place very much in the manner a 
whipped dog tries to get into favor again with 
his master. Mr. Bell interviewed the truant 
officer, and paid the man for whom Billy had 
worked, a good sum of money for releasing the 
boy from a bargain in which he had no part. 
Then Billy was told. And when Billy fairly 
understood that he was to belong to little Dick 
Bell, and that nothing could ever be done to 
him any more without Dick’s consent, he had a 
long fit of sobbing aloud, just from joy. 

“You don’t seem to like things,” said Dick 
to Peter, after arrangements were finally com- 
pleted. 

“Well, I don’t; and I don’t seem to have 
been consulted much. Your Billy will be a 
responsibility to you, I can tell you that ! He 
isn’t a man, like my cobbler. My cobbler 
knows something himself ! ” 


DICK^S CHARGE. 


73 


“ It’s all your doings, anyway,” laughed Dick. 
“We never should have found him if you had 
not counted those doughnuts and noticed about 
the crumbs. You ought to go into the regular 
detective business, Peter.” 

“ That cave wasn’t much, anyway,” returned 
Peter, mollified. “The truant officer, or the 
town folks, ought to have known about it. 
Anybody could come and hide there. We 
were off the track, weren’t we, when we thought 
it was the cobbler’s hut ? ” 

The family lingered in the country a few 
days longer, on Billy’s account, “ to get him 
well-settled,” Dick said. Many were the charges 
which Dick gave him, on behavior and educa- 
tion; and these vastly increased the boy’s ad- 
miration for his guardian. 

“ You see, Billy, you must learn to write, 
first of all,” said Dick, “ so you can tell me 
how you are getting on, and not oblige me to 
come down here every fortnight. Travelling is 
expensive and I’ve got to save up to keep you 
in clothes.” 

Billy sighed. “ I’ve got some money, if you 
want it bad.” 

“ You ? ” said Dick. “ Where is it? ” 

Billy winked, then leered, and sat silent, just 
as he used to do. 

Dick seized him, shook him, and the boy 
spoke. 

“I dun’no for sure, but I guess it’s in the 
cave. Father said he’d hid it there for me, and 


74 


LITTLE DICK^S SON. 


then he died and I couldn’t find it, and I dar’n’t 
let on I knew anything.” 

“ Now, that’s work for Peter,” Dick reflected. 
“Yes, Peter’s got to hunt for that. Peter’ll 
feel better after he bosses that job, whether 
there’s money or not.” 

An hour from that time Peter, armed with 
crowbar, candles, ropes, and spades, and followed 
by the boys, was making his way into the cave 
from the top. 

But they dug here, and dug there, and spied 
about with their candles, all in vain. 

“ I heard a geologist tell my father yesterday,” 
remarked Peter, suddenly pausing, dirty and 
perspiring, “ that this cave must once have been 
a pond, and if it were so there must have been 
an opening into which the water flowed from 
above, just as there is down there for the tide 
water to flow in — another old brook-bed some- 
where up here. I’m going to dig right on 
ahead awhile.” 

As he dug he seemed to enter. “ Put that 
rope around my waist, so if I get stuck you can 
pull me out,” he commanded Dick and Billy 
pretty soon. 

The rope was quickly secured, and the three 
boys worked away at a possible opening which 
proved to be a real one, into a narrow slit, like 
the rocky bed of an ancient stream. Only 
Peter’s legs and the rope were visible when Dick 
and Billy heard a shout ; “ Pull me back, quick ! 
quick ! quick ! ” 


DICK^S CHARGE. 


75 


Billy and Dick tugged so hard they fell back- 
wards, Peter on top of them. 

“ Get up, quick, quick I ” Peter called. 
“ There’s water trickling ! I’ve got it, Billy I 
Quick ! run ahead ! follow the bed of the brook 
out to the cove ! ” 

The boys ran hard, Peter holding a dirty tin 
box — for not only was the tide coming in, but 
a tiny stream was dropping into the cave 
through the hole where Peter had been nearly 
lost, and where they had just entered a few 
hours before. 

Breathless they gained the beach ; and then 
Peter with much solemnity, handed the box to 
Billy, saying, “ Of course this is yours.” 

Billy took it, but he had fallen into one of 
his dazed moods. His face showed he was 
struggling with memory. “ I can’t never think 
just how to get it open. I’ll bet I can’t ! ” said 
he. 

“ I can ! ” declared Peter masterfully. “ Hand 
it here ! ” 

The cover was well rusted down. Peter 
couldn’t see a chance to pry it up. 

With a crowbar he smashed the box. There 
was nothing in it except some silver coin and a 
paper. The paper said where Billy was born 
and when his mother died. The boys counted 
the silver — fifty dollars — and handed it over 
to Billy. 

With a gasp poor Billy seemed to come back. 
He looked triumphant. 


76 


LITTLE DICK'S SON. 


“ Now you can come every day to see me I ” 
he shouted, pouring the coins into Dick’s lap, 
dropping them, in a stream, till they rolled off 
into the sand. “ Here’s enough to bring you ! ” 
(Bufc Mr. Bell put Billy’s monhy in the sav- 
ings bank.) 

Peter was satisfied nowi and ready to go 
home. 




TWO GUARDIANS AND THEIR WARDS. 77 


. XII. 

TWO GUARDIANS AND THEIR WARDS. 

The month of October found the Bells 
settled in their city home. Ruth had had double 
promotion, and her brothers felt that she re- 
flected honor on the family. Both brothers 
adored her, though never weary of giving her 
advice. 

Peter was to graduate the next June ; so he 
was studying hard, and trying to decide whether 
he had better go to a private school and fit for 
college, or enter the high school and take a busi- 
ness training. His parents had left the decision 
to him at his request, as he had told them he 
wished to be responsible for his own career — 
a man would not like to find fault with his 
parents in after-years for settling things for him ! 

But at no time did he forget his cobbler. 
When Saturday night came, whether it was the 
evening of the dancing-class or of a game-party, 
Peter always spent an hour with Nora and her 
father, taking tea with them, on which occasion 
he and the old man discussed politics. 

“ You’ll live to see him governor I ” always 
was the cobbler’s remark to Nora, after Peter had 

Lof C.2 


78 


LITTLE niCK^S SON. 


gone. “ Hear what I say and don’t ye forget. 
Peter Bell will be governor of this State and 
if ye mind yer work perhaps he’ll give you a job 
of cleaning at the State House — but if he does 
or doesn’t, ’taint any matter. You just remem- 
ber he hauled up your father or he’d have been 
not lit to take care of the likes of you as I do 
now. Peter Bell saved me and got me back my 
good name. We must try and be an honor to 
him ! ” 

Nora nodded ; but she had no idea of becom- 
ing a scrubber and cleaner of public buildings. 
She intended to be a teacher, as both the Bell 
boys knew. 

With no less faithfulness did Dick watch 
over Billy. He spent many a Saturday with 
him, and sometimes Sunday. Often he grew 
discouraged with Billy’s disregard for neatness 
and school lessons. “If he only had a son to 
help him as I had ! ” thought Dick. 

The more Dick reasoned concerning Billy, 
the surer he became that a “son” was what 
the boy needed. Finally, after many struggles 
with himself, he felt he might help Billy, who 
at least would never talk of the conversation, 
and might understand. 

So one Sunday afternoon, when he and Billy 
were strolling along the beach, and Billy had 
confessed he had been “ doing naughty,” Dick 
told him about his “ son.” 

“You ain’t old enough for a son — I don’t 
believe you ! ” answered Billy. 


TWO GUARDIANS AND THEIR WARDS. 79 


“ Now look here, Billy,” said Dick, “ I’m 
telling you just for your good. I don’t know 
when I began to have a ‘ son.’ When I was a 
little bit of a boy I used to think he’d come 
round the corner, and I’d cry ’cause he never did. 
Of course, as I got big I knew I didnH have a 
real boy for a son. But there’s something 
within me that knows all about me, and when I 
get stuck what to do, gives me points ; and 
sometimes I still call it my ‘ son.’ It’s so, 
^illy, and you had better believe it.” 

“ Ain’t you scared of him ? ” asked Billy. 

“Well, Billy, I might be if I didn’t obey 
him. But when he just won’t let me do things, 
why I don’t do them — and then, Billy, both of 
us are glad.” 

“ Same as when I wanted to punch that 
truant officer when I saw him round here spy- 
ing on me yesterday, and didn’t. That’s my 
‘son’?” said Billy. 

“Just so, Billy. That was ^our son — he 
kept you from doing that.” 

“ He’d be an awful lot of help to a fellow,” 
said Billy. 

“ He is ; but don’t you talk about him — just 
keep him to yourself. You see, now I’ve got 
big, I know that most people have something 
inside that would like to keep ’em straight, and 
tries to. I used to call it my ‘son’ — some- 
times I do now, just as I told you.” 

Both boys stopped, and looked across the 
water at the setting sun ; and, hardly knowing 


80 


LITTLE mCK^S SON, 


what he was doing, Dick picked up a stick, and 
traced the two words, “ my son,” in the sand, 
and the waves came up and washed away the 
letters. But Billy saw Dick put his hand on 
his heart, as if he had something hidden there, 
and remembered all his life long the happy look 
that was on his young guardian’s face. 

In guarding Dick’s secret Billy began to be- 
lieve in it, and to think out for himself the 
right and wrong of what he did, until one morn- 
ing when the truant officer came into school he 
brought him a chair before his teacher had told 
him to do so. 

“ That chap’s coming out all right,” observed 
the officer to the teacher. 

“ How can it be otherwise,” she answered, 
“ when Dick Bell is his friend ? ” 


















f^^AUG 30 1901 




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